ATI Radeon HD 5750 Review and Ratings

Editors’ Rating:

Our Verdict:
The low-cost Radeon HD 5750 is a good choice for those on a budget who game on smaller monitors, but who still want DirectX 11 support for future games. Read More…

What We Liked…

DirectX 11 support for less than $130

Small form factor, low power draw make for a viable upgrade for compact entertainment PCs

Same triple-LCD support as much pricier ATI cards

What We Didn’t…

Still needs six-pin power connector

Blocks adjacent expansion slot

ATI Radeon HD 5750 Review

By Matt Safford, reviewed October 13, 2009

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Okay, it's video-card-upgrade time, and your bank account is currently too strapped to handle the $159 asking price of the ATI Radeon HD 5770, and the beefier $379 Radeon HD 5870 is way out of the question. Understood. But you still want your system to support the fancy new visual flourishes that soon-to-arrive DirectX 11 (DX11) games will offer, as well as multiple monitor support. That's not an uncommon wish list today, and the $129 Radeon HD 5750 is an enticing option to fulfill it. Its price isn’t drastically less than the 5770, but its performance isn’t far behind that card, either. Considering the asking price and the minimal number of DX11 games being released before the end of 2009, the 5750 might also be a good stopgap if your current card just doesn’t cut it any more, but you’d rather wait and see how quickly DX11 takes off, and what kind of DX11 performance will be offered from rival graphics-card maker Nvidia.

DirectX 11, the new gaming-centric application programming language that will be launching with Windows 7 (and also to be available to Vista users as well), promises a fair bit of visual improvements for gamers. Users upgrading to a DX11-compatible card (and running games that support DX11, some due out by the end of 2009) will experience graphical goodies like an improved Shader Model 5.0, and hardware tessellation, which should lead to more visually complex characters in games. DX11 also features DirectCompute support, designed to let developers offload computations normally handled by the CPU onto the graphics card. This ability has been available through Nvidia’s CUDA and ATI’s Stream technologies, but DirectCompute promises to gain more traction, as it’s a singular technology that will work with any DX11 card.

Thanks to ATI’s new Eyefinity technology, you’ll be able to connect up to three monitors to this card for productivity, or some super-high-resolution gaming.

The 5700 series of cards, also including the 5770, are the second round of DX11 cards from ATI. And while the 5750 falls on the budget-end of the DX11 bunch, it still packs some impressive architecture for a graphics card that should sell for around $130. The 5770 has 1GB of graphics memory (a 512MB version for around $109 should also be available shortly), and its core clock speed of 700MHz is just 150Hz behind the 5870. It also has 720 Stream Processors (80 fewer than the more expensive 5770). Power efficiency is even more impressive than the 5770, as this card draws just 86 watts at full load, 22 watts less than the 5850. And when idle, it sips just 16 watts. So if you’re looking for a practical excuse to upgrade, this card, over time, will save you money on your electric bill versus an older, more power-hungry card from a year or two ago.

The 5750 also features the same Eyefinity multimonitor support as the 5800 series cards. A pair of dual-link DVI ports, an HDMI port, and a DisplayPort connector on the back of the card will let you connect up to three monitors simultaneously for impressive desktop productivity, or gaming at extreme resolutions above and beyond the typical maximum of 2,560x1,600. If gaming at such high resolutions is your plan, though, one of the more powerful DX11 cards is probably a better choice. Productivity apps on a triple-monitor setup with this card should run smoothly, however.

We weren’t able to truly test the 5770’s DX11 capabilities, as the only game currently available with any DX11 support is EA’s BattleForge, and that game isn’t fully optimized for DX11. Games like DiRT 2 and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. are due to be released this year with full DX11 support, but the flood of DX11 games won’t happen until 2010.

We did, however, put the Radeon HD 5750 through our usual round of DirectX 10 (DX10) gaming tests in our labs with a newly updated testing rig running Windows 7. We came away quite impressed with this card’s playable performance in games up to 1,920x1,200. The more expensive Radeon HD 5770 did slightly better, but for those willing to turn the detail levels down a bit at times, this card should handle today’s DX10 games on 24-inch monitors. Those with smaller screens should experience butter-smooth performance without having to sacrifice detail settings.

In our DX10 World in Conflict test, the 5750 scored average frame rates of 37, 30, and 19 frames per second (fps), at resolutions of 1,280x1,024, 1,920x1,200, and 2,560x1,600, respectively. The 5770 scored 42fps, 32fps, and 22fps on the same tests, respectively, or just a few frames ahead.

With a pair of DVI ports, HDMI, and a DisplayPort, there’s no shortage of connection options with this card.

In our Far Cry 2 DX10 test, the 5770 was still ahead, but again, not by much. The 5770 scored average frame rates of 56.8fps at 1,680x1,060, 49.8fps at 1,920x1,200, and 33.3fps at 2,560x1,600. The 5750’s scores of 49fps, 43.2fps, and 28.7fps on the same tests, respectively, again weren’t far behind. Those willing to dial down the detail levels just slightly should be able to achieve playable frame rates here even at the demanding resolutions of a 30-inch screen. That’s quite impressive for a card at this price and power-consumption point.

The synthetic 3DMark Vantage test might be the best indicator at this point of the performance gap between these two cards, however. Here, the 5770’s score of 9,888 on the Performance setting, and 4,272 on the Extreme setting, are a bit further ahead of the 5750’s scores: 8,136 and 3,386, respectively. Still, considering the previous-generation ATI single-GPU champ, the Radeon HD 4890 (which still sells for around $200) scored 4,625 on the Extreme test, this indicates that ATI's lowest-price DX11 card isn’t far behind its previous-generation high-end GPU. The $379 5870, however, is unsurprisingly in another league, scoring 17,027 on the Performance test and 8,253 in Extreme. So while while the 5750 is impressive for its $129 asking price, those expecting playable performance at high resolutions under DX11 will likely have to shell out for a more expensive card.

Still, for those who don’t consider themselves more than casual 3D gamers, and those looking to upgrade a media PC that only has space for a short (though full-height and dual-width) graphics card that won’t be obsolete with the launch of DirectX 11, the 5750 is a good choice. Likewise, if you need a new card now but would still like to wait and see what rival Nvidia has to offer on the DX11 front in the coming months, the 5750 is a smart stopgap that will keep you playing smoothly today. It won’t do too much damage to your savings scheme if you plan on opting for a serious-performance DirectX 11 card in the coming months.